Maker: Christine from Chocolate and Steel
It’s full on Christmas mode around my home. There’s music playing, and candles in my fireplace, a tree decorated with every ornament that I’ve ever gotten in my entire life…including all the ones my kids have made. My home is…
![When I was in high school I worked at a vintage store. It was my dream to work there. When some dreams come true, you see all the cracks in your fantasy but in this case it’s was pretty darn near perfect.
I dressed the mannequins (pretty sure that’s where my short stint as a Hollywood costumer 10 years later came from). I reorganized the store any way I wanted (finally a place for my OCD to shine). Window/store displays were 100% mine (my childhood obsession with dioramas came in handy). I got a discount and first pick of everything that came in.
My bosses were an “old” (to me at 16 year old although they were probably only in their 20s or 30s) couple of punk rockers with bleached hair and tattoos that looked like they were done with a blunt needle and ink from a ballpoint pen.
I was a Catholic school girl who wore plaid skirts and white button up shirts from 9-3 Monday-Friday but after school and on the weekend, I dressed like I’d just come out of a time machine from the 1950s and smoked cigarettes as I rung people up while Iggy Pop blared from the boombox on the shelf behind the counter.
It was a magical time when I look back with my rose-colored glasses. There were moments of magic but also feeling scared being in the store at night alone, wondering if my bosses thought I was doing a good job and spending hours cleaning (spraying Windex and rubbing spots with a paper towel) garbage bags full of clothes my bosses dropped off from their hauls at the by-the-pound wholesalers.
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